A very simple vegetable soup

I also call this Mommy B soup, dedicated to my mum who came up with this recipe. It is the simplest soup to make and it has an instant wellness feeling associated with it. While growing up ,my mum made it for me and my sister when we were sick or we had an exam or any occasion which needed some amount of comforting. And it never failed. Today I made it for A, who is a bit under weather with a sore throat. I can't say it cured him completely but it did make me feel a lot better :)

While making this soup you can be creative and use whatever vegetables you have on hand. The recipe I have below has the combination I use most frequently. The nice part about this soup is its packed with everything thats good for you and is pretty much fat-free.

This is my entry no. 6 for the Recipe Marathon on One Hot Stove. I can't believe that this marathon ends tomorrow, I have had a lot of fun blogging every day and also reading what the other runners are cooking up.

Ingredients:

- 2 medium size beets

- 2 carrots

- 1 large tomato

- 2 small potatoes

- 2 garlic cloves

- 7 peppercorns

- 1 tablespoon yellow moong dal (optional)

- Peel beets, carrots and potatoes and chop them into chunks.

- Also chop the tomato into chunks.

- Combine all the vegetables with garlic, peppercorns and moong dal in a pressure cooker and cover with just enough water.

- Pressure cook till all the vegetables are soft.

- Blend into a puree and reheat with salt (to taste) and more pepper if required.

- Serve with some hot buttered toast.

Makes 4 side servings.

Sweet potato and turnip soup

This post has been way overdue. I made this soup a few weeks earlier but then there was a busy Thanksgiving weekend and then an even busier week, which kept me away from blogging. In the week before last, we got these gorgeous turnips and fingerling sweet potatoes from Coon Rock Farms. I don't have much experience cooking either of these so wasn't too sure of what to make out of them. So I decided to take a page out of my Mum's recipe book. She makes this soup which we call the Mommy B soup (that has to be another post). It involves cooking any combination of vegetables with garlic and peppercorns in the pressure cooker and then pureeing them. It can't get any simpler! This is exactly what I did with these turnips and sweet potatoes. Except I was feeling a bit adventurous and decided to garnish it with some sweet and spicy walnuts. Here goes!

Ingredients:

1 large turnip, peeled and chopped into chunks

4-6 fingerling sweet potatoes or 1 large, also peeled and chopped

1/2 onion, halved

1 large garlic clove

7 peppercorns

1 teaspoon maple syrup or sugar

- Combine all the vegetables along with garlic and peppercorns in a pressure cooker.

- Cover with just enough water and pressure cook for 10 mins.

- After the mixture is cool enough, blend into a puree.

- Put back on heat and add salt and maple syrup or sugar (this is only to counter the slight bitterness of the turnip).

- Top with some walnuts if desired and serve hot!

Sweet and Spicy Walnuts:

Handful walnuts

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder

- Heat a pan and add walnuts.

- When walnuts are heated through, add the salt, sugar and cayenne.

- Get the pan off the heat and mix well. (At this point its important to turn the heat off, if not there will be spicy cayenne smoke. I write from experience :))